In the Almeida’s beautifully nuanced production, I finally get Isabella. Here, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, she’s strong and self-confident, but there is something damaged about her attitude to men. She argues forcefully with Angelo (Rory Kinnear), refuses to give in to him, but the body language is a little ambiguous. In telling her brother of her decision, and persuading him to accept it, she hugs him in a way that close enough to incestuous to be uncomfortable. Is she flirting with the Duke (Ben Miles)? In the end, when the Duke’s plot to deceive her is revealed, she’s not particularly happy to see her brother return from the dead, and her rejection of the Duke is scornful. This is clearly a woman who, for whatever reason, wants to get to her nunnery.

As Ben Miles said in the aftershow talkback, in Shakespeare, the characters always have the perfect words to express themselves, and one of the joys of this production is the extremely high quality of the speaking, from every actor. They are truly wonderful.

The Almeida theatre has very cheap restricted view seats (£8), behind narrow poles that you can easily see around. Even from E21, at the back of the circle, I had a reasonable view. It’s all sold out now, though there may be returns until it finishes on 10 April.

As the play begins, two Oxford undergraduates have carried out a vicious murder simply to entertain themselves, and are making their friends unwitting extras to a Nietzchean nightmare.  We see intellectual arrogance untempered by compassion, set in the early 1920s as social butterflies flit over deep postwar grief.

Blake Ritson is a controlled, tense Wyndham Brandon, the ringleader of the pair, self-confident and without remorse.   At times, he’s so convincing he’s magnificantly hideous – you know he’s a monster but he almost leads you into his world.   His nemesis is Rupert Cadell, played by Bertie Carvel, in a subtle performance of a character who’s war experiences have scarred him, but added depth.

Alex Waldmann (Charles Granillo, the second murderer) seems to be everywhere lately, and is slowly growing on me.  His Sebastian in the Donmar’s start-studded Twelfth Night was fairly innocuous, and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t particularly register him in Hamlet.  He was very good in Shraddha at the Soho Theatre recently, and here gives us a bundle of nerves, who probably never really wanted to be involved but has past the point of no return.  Just as you think he’s going to explode, he calms down again, backwards and forwards, pumping up the tension.

As the play builds to its denouement  the tension becomes almost unbearable, with  Granillo quietly losing it behind a chair while Brandon and Cadell argue the value of life, murder and its punishment.  I don’t want to spoil it, but was relieved that my expected final twist did not arrive, and so society at least is redeemed.

Rope is staged in the round, though this adds little to the play and obstructs some sightlines.  It’s not a good idea to open the large lid of a chest, then do plot-explaining things behind it while hidden from 10-20% of the audience.  Seat E4 was certainly restricted view, and not in the normal Almeida sense of a 15cm pole which can easily be avoided.  Still, it was very cheap, so I’m not complaining.

Rope plays at the Almeida until 6 Feb 2010 and is well worth seeing.  Note that the seating configuration shown in their online booking isn’t what’s actually in the theatre for this production.  If you’re worried, it might be better to call the box office.

Morrisey and Mackintosh

I wanted to see David Morrissey on the stage, and because I’ve recently started some charity work dealing with sex offenders this play appealed.   It’s not easy to watch, or entertainment in any normal sense of the word, but if the theatre holds a mirror up to nature, this illuminates some of the difficult, grey areas around crimes which society sees as the worst of all.

The play is in three acts, each a duologue exploring a side of the story.

In the first, the two brothers meet.  Drew is in a psychiatric hospital, and tells Terry that he was abused as a child.  Terry tried, and failed, to protect him.

The second act’s flirtation between Terry and American actress Kara Sternbach’s fifteen year old Jennifer is very uncomfortable – she oscillates from seductress to innocence, only partly aware of what she’s doing, one moment keen to carry it through, the next scared and unsure, and shows so clearly why it is the adult who must be responsible in this situation.

The final act’s denouement is as awful as it is unexpected.  The manipulative pederasts’s excuse that ‘the child enjoyed it’ is firmly shown up for the lie it is, as Terry admits to having been a willing participant in his own abuse – “it made me feel important for once” -  but also to unbearable conflict about his own sexuality and feelings because of it.  He may well have in some sense been willing at the time, but he’s still thoroughly mixed up and badly broken now.

This play challenges ideas about families, manipulation and sex offending.  It’s raw, honest and painful.

“In a Dark Dark House” runs at the Almeida until 17 January.  Seat C5 in the stalls offered an excellent view, very close to the stage.